To Airy Thinness Beat
by ShikiR
Summary: One Master, one Servant, or so the story goes. For a fight to the death. Ayaka knew this. Why then, did she only hear half of a set of Command Seals? Why, then, did Shirou Emiya - kind, friendly, and not at all a Magus - bear the other half? And why, why does she recognize her Servant? Why does he recognize her? Is she going to die? Shirou Emiya/Ayaka Sajyou


Formalcraft was rather simple, or at least easy, in theory. It required no _od_, as it was a ritual that drew energy from the surrounding world. Even a mediocre Magus like Ayaka should have no trouble. But -

"Gah!" She let out a muffled scream of pain, despite her best efforts. A hair-thin stream of blood flowed from her right thumb, pooling at the center of a small ritual circle. She wouldn't be doing any grand workings, but the ritual would help strengthen the Bounded Field surrounding the mansion. After a moment, she pinched her thumb, slowing the flow of blood as she grabbed a roll of gauze.

As she wrapped the gauze around her thumb, she watched the circle. It was fairly self-sufficient once it was activated; formal mysteries were convenient that way. Eventually, the lines started to glow a slight red, which rather stood out in the dim light of the early morning. She pinched the gauze against her thumb with another finger while she reached for the medical tape. It would be rather inconvenient if it came unfurled. Once she grabbed it, she fiddled with the end, trying to get it loose with her off hand. The sticky plastic refused to cooperate; she couldn't even get a nail under it. She pushed on it a little bit harder, and it slipped from her grasp and out of her hand.

_Clang._ The roll of tape echoed like a drum in the silence. It had landed on the book she'd had out - a listing of medical Mysteries that taunted her. She wasn't terrible with them; she simply wasn't perfect. When you're knitting together your own flesh with Prana, anything less than perfect tends to be painful.

Pain was the way of the magus, but Ayaka was a terrible one.

A minute later, she finally managed to get the tape-end free and wrap up her thumb. It wasn't pretty - usually, she only nicked herself, which healed quick enough without a bandage - but it would do. In the meantime, the ritual circle had gone dark.

"_Coo, coo._" The dove she attempted to sacrifice had returned - probably. There were a lot of them, and she couldn't quite discern between them. She supposed they held a grudge for her near-killing them most days. She hadn't actually killed one yet, but she would eventually.

She swore to father she would, after all.

With her un-bandaged left, she reached underneath the old oaken table that she usually left her ritual athame on. She would need a new one soon; the handguard was starting to rust, and Ayaka couldn't say she was interested in tetanus. She fumbled around blindly for a second, before her hand wrapped around a handle. The familiar feeling of her mother's - of her - old tin watering can was always comforting. It reminded her of happier days.

It reminded her of before the Fourth Holy Grail War.

She lifted up the can, taking care to make sure it didn't hit the table's legs as she did so. It was empty. Well, that was odd. _Where'd the water go?_ It had been mostly full when she finished watering the night before - three-quarters, at least. She shrugged. It wasn't terribly important, just irritating. There wasn't a spill anywhere, so perhaps it just evaporated. She walked over to a simple sink jutting out of the wall that divided the greenhouse and the Sajyou mansion proper, her sock-clad feet barely making a sound on the bare stone flooring.

She set the can down in the sink, an artfully carved thing that looked like it would be more at home in a castle than the wall of a greenhouse. An old, slightly rusted spigot controlled the water flow - there was an excellent chance the pipe was old enough to have been made from lead. Drinkable, this water was _not._ The plants wouldn't care, however. She turned it, and the water spilled out into the can, the drumming sound magnified by the metal. It filled quick enough, and she set about watering the various plants that inhabited the greenhouse. Local plants, like yellow chrysanthemums and lilies and a small cherry blossom tree, but also daffodils and edelweiss and even a - young, and thus slightly ironically rather small - giant sequoia her sister planted shortly before she died.

She knelt down, looking closer at the ground surrounding the sequoia. One of the roots was shriveled, probably dying. Ayaka frowned. The Japanese winters - stupid frigid things - were not kind to the Northwest American plant. She would need to replace the mulch. It was the end of April, so a cold snap was unlikely, but she wasn't going to take a chance. She'd stop by the garden-care store after school, she decided.

* * *

Shirou Emiya spared a glance at the horizon as he walked to work from the school. It was perhaps seven-thirty, if the sun was any indication. Not terribly late for the end of April, but it was already dark enough. As such, when a girl walked up to him, he was understandably concerned. Primarily for the girl - she looked to be around twelve, and Fuyuki had been rather on the dangerous side over the last week or so. But...on a primal level, his instincts were screaming. Something was _very_ wrong.

"You're Shirou Emiya, right?" she asked. Her voice was soft, lilting - exactly the type one would expect from a girl her size. So why was he nervous? Why was his heart pounding against his chest like a hammer on an anvil?

"Uh, yes." He nodded. "That's right."

"Excellent! Excellent, excellent. Very good." She clapped, for all the world looking like she was overjoyed at meeting him. "Oh, but my manners." She curtsied, her snowy thigh-length dress - if something so short could merit the term - emphasizing the movement. "I'm Manaka. Manaka _Pendragon_." She giggled, like she had used the family name of her crush rather than her own. And kept giggling.

And kept giggling. And Shirou realized his breathing quickly, panicking. This slip of a girl - he couldn't remember ever feeling such fear. Who was she - _what _was she?

"Shirou, you better do it soon." Her smile vanished, exchanged for deathly seriousness. Her eyes shifted from a blue like the sky of a spring day to pure sapphire.

"Huh?"

"Summon him! You'll definitely summon him - I know that much! It's pretty obvious. Who else could? Your father? That murderer? That thief? He was a problem! But now he's _dead_! And I'm not. And you'll bring my love back to me." Faster than his eyes could follow, she moved from a few feet away to right in front of him, her finger resting on his breastbone. "You'll bring him back to me, right? Right, _Shirou?_"

"I don't-"

"You don't have a choice! Exactly! Very good, Shirou. You're very smart. Very smart. I guess you kids-" You kids? She was at least half a decade his junior. "-can be smart. Not like that girl. That little girl that's going to die soon. Very soon." Was she - was she going to murder someone? "Oh, no. Silly Shirou! You can't save her. Because she's going to _die_! You're going to play _your_ part, and make me _ever_ so happy!" Her voice brokered no arguments. If he didn't...do whatever it was, he would definitely be killed. No, he wouldn't be at all. "Don't you want to be a hero, Shirou Emiya? Help a little girl?" Shirou Emiya would have no meaning -

_What do I do what do I do what do I do what do I-_ "See, I knew you would!" She stepped back, and the wind caught her hair, unmasking a face whose innocence was a lie. Shirou could tell that much. "I told you he would! And you doubted me!" She giggled again. "I knew it!" Who was she talking to? "Neh, Shirou, you should probably get going. You're wasting moonlight!" With that, she walked past him and off into the darkness.

* * *

Shirou had mostly shoved the...incident...from earlier into the back of his mind by the time he was finished working. It wasn't terribly complicated work, mostly just unloading trucks.

"Emiya," his boss called as he was walking out the doorway.

"Yes?"

"Good work, son."

Shirou smiled. The owner and his daughter were really nice people - he was lucky to have gotten this job.

"Thank you, sir."

"Thursday after next work?" A little over a week, then. He nodded. "See ya then, then."

Shirou smiled in return and turned to the doorway. He opened it up to a sight that was - well, in the grand scheme of things, not terribly unusual. Particularly today.

"Sajyou-san?" Ayaka Sajyou - who he knew more by reputation than anything else, though he knew she was a friend of Mitsuzuri - was carrying a massive bag of...something over her shoulder, dirt or mulch by the looks of it. The gardener Santa Claus' shoulder-length black hair was all in a tizzy. She looked like she was having trouble - justifiably so, that bag had to be at least fifty kilograms. She probably didn't _weigh_ much more than that.

How was she carrying it, anyway?

"Oh, Emiya-san. Good evening." Her voice was...strained, to put it mildly. It didn't sound like she particularly wanted to talk.

"Good evening." He blinked. "Would you like some help?"

Her eyebrows furrowed, before she glanced at her shoulder. "Oh, no, I'm fine."

An objection wouldn't deter Shirou, however. He turned quickly, eyes darting around the room he was just in. "Hotaruzuka-san, could I borrow the dolly?"

"'Course." The man waved it off. "Just bring it back by tomorrow or the day after."

"Of course, sir." He grabbed the simple dolly that Copenhagen kept, and walked back outside. Sajyou had only moved perhaps a meter. "Sajyou-san, just put it on here."

The girl's eyebrows furrowed for a moment, a frown on her face, before she relented and carefully put the bag on the dolly. "Thank you."

He waved it off. "Of course. You live in the foreigners' district, correct?"

She nodded. "You're friends with Matou, right? I live right near there."

"Oh, okay. That's a bit of a walk. You were planning to carry this the entire way?"

She shrugged. "In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea." She didn't seem too terribly bothered.

With that, they walked in silence. Some minutes after they crossed the bridge, he spared a glance at the girl walking beside him, whose eyes in turn were focused on the sidewalk ahead. He wasn't particularly ashamed to say he found her attractive - attraction to Ayaka Sajyou at Homurahara was about as bog-standard as things could be. It hadn't entered into his decision-making, of course; if it was that Shinji kid he shared a class with - was that already almost a decade ago? Jeez - struggling under a bag of mulch, he'd _still_ help him out.

But - well, she seemed very different from how she presented at school. She usually came across as...headstrong, he supposed. Self-assured? Confident? Something like that. He would have expected her to deny his help outright, solely out of pride.

Shirou's thoughts came to a screeching halt as he realized something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Sajyou hadn't changed demeanor at all - she hadn't noticed anything, then. If only he could sense it...Magecraft. It had to be.

Or maybe it was just his imagination. He looked around - the night was silent, other than the his and Sajyou's footsteps. To calm his pounding heart, he sped up the pace slightly. If there was something, he was moving away from it - problem solved.

Unfortunately, he realized as they passed Sakura's house, the sensation did not go away. If anything, it got worse.

"The next left," Sajyou said, breaking the silence. "Second house on the right."

Sure enough, as they rounded the corner a large glass building - presumably a greenhouse, judging by what he was wheeling - and an adjacent mansion came into view.

And then things went wrong.

* * *

When the famously unflappable Shirou Emiya yanked her arm, screaming to run, she rather understood the gravity of the situation, and _ran_.

There were very few hostile things that could cross the mansion's wards - they'd be safe there. Somehow, Manaka had even created a Bounded Field that judged a person's mental state before she died. Something about neurotransmitter sensitivity - she didn't have enough biology to understand it, frankly. And even if she did, now was not the time to be thinking about it.

"The-" _Gasp! _"-greenhouse!" She pulled him slightly to her side, aiming at the greenhouse door. She hadn't locked it, as robberies weren't particularly common, but it had a deadbolt she could lock. Between that and the Bounded Fields, they should be fine. Safe.

From whatever it was.

When she reached the door, she threw it open, and slammed it closed a split second later. _Just lock it and bolt it and-_

"Forgive me, young warrior." A voice, solemn as the grave, came from the middle of the room. "Your escape and the maiden's was valiant, but you have reached the end." She spun around to the source of the voice. Too slowly.

"_Gah!_" came the scream of a boy. A tall man, Japanese and dressed in a royal purple, stood like a pillar in the middle of the room. Motionless, silent. With a sword running red with blood.

_Drip drop. Drip drop. _Oh. She was going to die. And Shirou was going to die - was probably already dead. _I'm sorry, father._

Something fell against her - _a body dead body _\- and she lost her footing. Not like it mattered. She was going to die either way.

Had she gotten Shirou into this? If he had never helped her, he wouldn't be here, and he wouldn't be bleeding out on top of her. _And I'd have died and I'd have failed but at least I wouldn't have killed someone too_

As death incarnate stalked towards her, she saw her life flash before her eyes. As a child, sitting at the breakfast table - no, that never happened. She didn't remember that. What was she seeing?

_"__Thank you for this breakfast, milady." His hair was like the sun, illuminating the kitchen far better than the candles that somebody had lit. A gentle smile rested on his face._

_"__Now, ya better keep my sister safe, ya hear?" Why was her voice so high? Was it ever that high as a child?_

_"__You have my word."_

_Then Flame. Fire. Death. Paradise._

The world glowed, and time froze.

_Clang._

The sound of metal against metal echoed through the building. The last ray of light from the sun before darkness ruled Fuyuki glinted off shining armor. And on some level, a level barely conscious, she knew she would be okay.

The man in purple groaned. "Foolish girl." He paused. "Your will be done, Master," he said, as if responding to someone speaking she didn't hear.

"Begone from this place, knave." The other man's voice was forceful, brokering no argument.

"Such are my Master's orders, if it pleases you, _Briton._" Absently, Ayaka realized the man had somehow made the term an insult. "Until our next clash, Saber."

And then the room went silent.

* * *

Shirou awoke in a surprisingly low level of pain, though he wasn't sure _why _he expected any pain at all. "Saber, he's awake!" shouted a voice that was far too close for its volume. He struggled to place it.

Wait - "Sajyou-san?" It certainly sounded like the girl. But why was she by his bedside? He tried to piece together what had happened last night, a task made rather difficult by the muddled nature of his half-awake brain. He'd left work, encountered Sajyou, wheeled the whatever-it-was-he-didn't-check to her house, and then...something happened.

"Good morning, milord," came the voice of a man Shirou definitely didn't recognize. "I am glad to see you have healed."

Healed? What- "What happened?" He opened his eyes, slowly, adjusting to the light - the room was rather bright. It had to be midmorning, at least. Ayaka was sitting in a chair at the side of the bed he was laying it - a western-style wooden one - with a tall, blond man standing behind her.

"Well..." she began. "Shirou, do you know what Magecraft is?"

Wait, what? Ayaka Sajyou knew about Magecraft? He nodded. "You're a Magus?"

"Not a very good one, but yes." She exhaled audibly. "We were attacked last night by a Servant, a..." She massaged the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at explaining this. Servants are familiars - _humanoid _familiars."

Humanoid familiars? "The man in purple?"

She smiled softly. "I don't know his name, unfortunately, though Saber thinks he's an Assassin."

The man behind her smiled wryly. "He could not have been anything but a Saber or an Assassin, and one of those is taken, Master." It sounded distinctly like he'd said that before. Possibly multiple times.

Shirou tried to sit up, and winced as pain ran across his stomach. He glanced down at it - _I wonder where my shirt went_ \- and noticed a long scar across his stomach, right through his navel. "What the-"

"Assassin tried to kill you." Oh, right. He remembered that.

"You healed me?"

She shook her head. "You...just healed. I thought you were going to die, but...Saber appeared, and you healed."

He wasn't sure how to respond to that. He didn't know of any healing Mysteries, and a cut like the one the length of his scar probably couldn't be healed with the amount of Prana he could produce anyway.

His eyes drifted up his chest, until he paused. Probably unwisely, he brought his hand to the blood red mark that snaked its way down his sternum, and...nothing happened. The mark was about as wide as his smallest finger, in three parts each separated by a paper-thin line of normally-colored skin. "This is..." he breathed. It was on the edge of his consciousness - he knew he should know. "What are these?"

"Command Seals," responded the man he assumed was Saber. "The mark of a Master; the right to three absolute commands." He sounded vaguely reminiscent of something.

"They're..." Ayaka frowned. "I don't know. They're incomplete - they should be symmetrical. But...well..." She unbuttoned the first few buttons of the nightgown she was wearing, to reveal a mark identical to his along the center of her chest. No - it was a mirror image, he realized.

In other news, he felt his face getting slightly warm. She must have noticed, as her own face went rather pink and she re-buttoned her gown again rather hurriedly. She coughed into her hand. "_Anyway_. I...I really don't know why they're like that."

Well. He had no idea what to say in response. He was still kind of trying to process the last half-minute or so. "...Fuji-nee is going to kill me," he mumbled, focusing on _something_ that he could wrap his mind around. Taiga Fujimura was, at least, comprehensible.

"Miss Fujimura?" He nodded. "Why?"

"She's my guardian. She's probably wondering why I'm not cooking breakfast..." And _that_ was pretty easy for her to take out of context. Wow, today was not his day. Well, if the cut on his stomach was any indication, it might just be that he's recently picked up some truly _terrible_ karma. "Do you have a phone?"

She nodded. "In the kitchen."

Shirou pulled the covers off himself completely, then swung his legs out off the bed. He winced slightly as the skin across his stomach - and thus his new scar - stretched painfully. With a breath, he stood up.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he waved off Ayaka's concern, though he was grateful for it. Higher priorities, like not getting murdered twice in twenty-four hours, took precedence. He followed her through a few hallways into a rather large but also rather quiet kitchen, ruled by a marble countertop and a refrigerator and little else. The phone hanging on the wall was pretty new, by the looks of it. He realized that a thin layer of dust covered it, though - and, when he looked again, the countertop as well. Only the refrigerator and a toaster oven in the corner looked like they were used in any way approaching often. Rather than recoil in horror, he tried for some tact. "Have you eaten yet?"

She shook her head. "No - I've, been..."

From the other room, Saber's voice filled in for her. "Milady has been worrying over your bedside and discussing strategy with me pretty much all night. I think she got an hour of sleep, milord."

Then it was decided. "Mind if I make something for the three of us?"

"You would?" He nodded. "I'd be very grateful-"

"It's the least I can do."

"-but I don't think Saber will eat any." Oh, fair enough. He was a familiar, after all; they weren't actually alive.

"Don't assume too much, milady. An army does not march on an empty stomach." Shirou blinked, before nodding - not that the Servant would see, but that was beside the point. Ayaka shrugged minutely, before the edges of her lips turned up into a smile.

"Alright, then." With that, he picked up the phone, dialing his own phone number. The phone barely rang once before it was picked up.

"..._good morning, Emiya residence._" Sakura's voice was threaded with an undercurrent of worry, and Shirou instantly felt terribly guilty. "_Shirou isn't here right now; can I take a message?_"

"Hey, Sakura..."

"Senpai? _Oh, thank God you're okay." _A moment passed in silence. _"Where are you? Sensei is panicking!_"

"I - uh," he hadn't quite thought through how he would explain this. "I slept at Ayaka Sajyou's house." Based on the expression of the girl in front of him, that was absolutely the _worst_ possible way to do so. Her eyebrows were furrowed, like he'd said something insulting about her and - _oh_.

"_Shirou, you did_ what_?_" Taiga's voice came through the phone in a scream; Sakura must have put it on speakerphone.

Before he could respond, Ayaka snatched the phone from his hand and put it up to her own ear. "Emiya-san was helping me with some garden care work -" _Hey, that's actually technically true._ "-and he sprained his ankle." _That's not._ He wasn't sure how he thought about someone lying on his behalf. "Since it was late, I offered for him to sleep off the injury in a spare bedroom." Actually, that wasn't technically a lie; he didn't consciously accept, but she didn't say he did. He was rather impressed.

As he couldn't hear the response, he wasn't sure what his guardian's response was, but it wasn't screaming, so that was good. Sajyou clearly had it handled better than he did. Rather than stand there awkwardly, he turned to the refrigerator. He opened it up, and - well. This would take some improvising.

* * *

**The reasoning behind making this boils down to "Because I can." You're welcome.**


End file.
